It began in Waikiki,
the snow storm in summer
the heat wave in winter.

It came after we visited a town
of seven thousand emeralds
and slept in a desert of pearls.
It was the year I was charged with trespassing.
It was the month without a clock.

Therapy, they told me,
will set your topsy-turvy life right,
erase the snow globe of confusion,
plow the sand from your brain.

Instead, the night wind napped
and a saint sailed in through a swarm of bees
to turn my jambalaya life
back round.

The saint was a baby,
a shapeshifter, a midnight walker
taller than a tree,
smaller than a frog.

She jumped from my pocket
and threw her jeweled coat
over my noontime gale.